Grooming

Recent weeks have entailed lots of trimming and weeding. I've used my favorite tool, the action hoe, a lot to keep after weeds while tiny. I walk around the yard and hoe away!

The late summer garden demands a lot of deadheading and trimming. Some of the perennials are finished and drying up and can be cut almost to the ground. Other plants have the spent flowers and dried parts cut off. I cut off many of the spent annuals at ground level, leaving the roots to enrich the soil over the winter. However, I pulled out and cleaned up the beds of diseased plants. My snapdragons got a fungus disease Botrytis blight (gray mold). Normally they would continue blooming until November, but we had too much cool damp weather.


I removed many of the stakes (English Y stakes). I used a few on other late summer plants, such as dahlia.